Initially, in the motion picture industry, an original motion picture negative film was exposed during a camera exposure operation, developed into a processed camera negative and subsequently operated upon in one of several ways to produce an imagery product. In such prior art analog systems, film dailies or rushes were conventionally produced as a motion picture was shot. These dailies or rushes were processed and then viewed by the director, the producer, the film editor, etc. working on the production to determine whether the scenes shot were acceptable. Each person on the production team assessed the dailies for different elements relevant to their respective roles in the team. The cinematographers and directors could see the results of the previous day's work in a format that faithfully “previewed” what the final release could look like.
Generally, in creating dailies, raw, unedited footage is developed, synched to sound, and printed on film in a batch. Alternatively, the raw footage is scanned or telecined onto video tape or disk. In the movie making process, several film scanners and/or telecines may be used in different locations. For example, dailies may be telecined on one particular model of telecine at a remote film location, whereas the final high-resolution scanning for the final digital intermediate might be done at the production studio on a scanner.
Conventionally, a target frame generated on intermediate film stock is used to calibrate scanners of various models and manufacturers. Unfortunately, the spectral response of the intermediate stock is different from camera original film stocks. Even though different brands of scanners can be calibrated to respond identically to standard intermediate film stock, the scanners will still react differently to camera original film stocks, which have different spectral dye characteristics. Discrepancies between telecined images for dailies and film scans for final color correction have to be addressed by a colorist during the final color correction.
Therefore, a need exists for techniques for profiling and calibrating film scanners so that telecined dailies and film scans match and requiring no further pre-processing.